[This post has been backdated to the appropriate day of the festival itself, just to make future reference convenient for me and to break things up a bit.]
[Today is nothing but annotation, as I didn't take any notes during the first day of the festival.
We got on the road around 7:30 AM and arrived at Shakori Hills Farm by late afternoon. After a long, hot day in the car, I know I personally was feeling a bit cranky — this wasn't improved much by finding out on our arrival that our ticket price did not cover the cost of parking or the cost of a festival program, which we had to purchase separately (who ever heard of that?). Though the prices were relatively reasonable, the lack of forewarning left us feeling like we were being nickel and dimed (especially after recent announcements from the Wild Goose that they'd sold so many tickets and made so much money that they could afford to give tickets away for free, while speakers had "waived their speaking fees" as a donation to the festival). Also, we were not prepared with cash and the festival organizers were not prepared with an ATM, so we spent about half an hour being shuffled from one volunteer booth to another trying to find a way to pay. I was initially disappointed by the facilities, or notable lack thereof — not only were there no showers available for campers (except pay-per-minute hot showers), but there weren't even any bathrooms or running water, only port-a-potties and "use your foot" hand-washing stations. This was more a concern for me because I had a cut on my hand that I worried could become infected without regular washing with hot water and soap (but luckily, a barrage of hand sanitizer, soapy water, clean water and a layer of Neosporin after every trip to the bathroom and once before bed kept it clean enough, plus occasional trips into Chapel Hill to use actual bathrooms). The camping ground area itself was wooded and pretty nice, though we were worried that someone would demand that we pay for an extra tent space because we had a small screen house in addition to our tiny two-person tent. Luckily, it was never an issue.
We arrived just as the opening ceremony was going on, so we missed out on that while setting up camp. Once we were settled, we decided to head in to Chapel Hill (about half an hour away) to get out of the heat for a little while, and so Jeff could show me around his alma mater a bit. We had dinner at a small restaurant (forget the name), though a combination of the heat and the long drive left me not feeling very hungry. Over dinner, we joked about the idea of finding a place that sold occult jewelry so that we could wear large, obvious pentacles during the rest of the festival and avoid being mistaken as Christians. (This had already happened a few times even in the short time we'd been at the festival site, and I think we were both feeling somewhat bristled about it. Not that we blamed anyone for the assumption, but it's always slightly uncomfortable to be surrounded by people assuming a certain amount of privilege. Even when I was a Christian, I didn't go around name dropping Jesus and God into casual conversations with strangers.) By this time, though, it was late enough that most of the shops were closed, so we tabled that idea. I resolved to try to set aside my grumpiness and cynicism and put on my "anthropologist hat," to become just an interested observer and note-taker.
When returned to the festival grounds and made our way to the campsite. We were both incredibly hot and disappointed there were no showers available, but we decided to follow Granny Weatherwax's philosophy of hygiene and "wash all the bits as and whens they becomes available." This meant fumbling with a wash cloth, bar of soap and spray bottle of water in the dark as we stripped naked and helped each other wash the most badly-in-need-of-washing areas, while other campers gathered around fires and tents only a few yards away. If anyone was offended (or even saw), we never heard anything. It did lead me to think about how much easier it is to keep clean when you're not worrying about also trying to stay modestly covered up. When we were ready for bed and trying to fall asleep, it was nearly 1 AM, but our neighbors were still going strong chatting and laughing. Jeff got up and politely asked them to quiet down a bit, since we'd been up at 6 AM and had had a long, hot drive that day. I was lying in our tent listening, when I heard the unmistakable accent of Gareth, who explained that this was actually a meeting of festival staff members and so they couldn't stay quiet. He did offer the "compromise" of trying to be a bit quieter and finish up as soon as they could (which, considering they were in the woods surrounded by other campers, I would think would be more common courtesy than compromise — but then, I was still grumpy and exhausted at that point). I'm still not sure Gareth realized who Jeff was, and I'm not sure what to make of the irony of setting up camp right next to the main staff tent completely by accident. For other nights, they moved the meeting elsewhere, so noise wasn't a problem after that, and the people whose tent it was inquired after us the next morning to make sure we'd slept okay, so it all worked out, really. We slept like logs, even though Jeff had forgotten to pack the mats so we were on pretty hard ground for the weekend.]
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